Innovations
INNOVATIONS +VOX: CES sees AI glazing innovation shift from gadgets to buildings
The CES exhibition has long been caricatured as a parade of shiny distractions: televisions the size of walls, gadgets for problems nobody has, and concept cars that never reach a showroom. This year, the more consequential story is that the industry’s favourite buzzword — artificial intelligence — is being packaged into the physical systems that make buildings run, factories produce and retailers sell.
The Consumer Technology Association, organiser of CES, has been keen to emphasise the scale of the event, with thousands of exhibitors spread across more than a dozen venues. Yet the signal from the show floor is less about volume and more about the direction of travel: away from AI as a feature and towards AI as infrastructure.
Nowhere is that clearer than in energy and the built environment, where product pitches are increasingly framed around reducing installation hassle while promising measurable savings. EcoFlow’s partnership with Homey by LG is emblematic: a bid to make the home behave like a managed grid, coordinating solar generation, batteries and household circuits with time-of-use optimisation and alerts designed for storms and outages. For developers and retrofitters, the appeal is obvious — a control layer that can sit above disparate devices, rather than a patchwork of single-brand apps.
Hardware companies are also trying to unlock electrification in places where it has stalled. ABOK’s “balcony” photovoltaic-and-storage concept targets apartments and dense housing, effectively treating the façade as an energy asset. Meanwhile, Stryten Energy is arguing for a more pragmatic battery future that is not dependent on one chemistry, showcasing lead, lithium and vanadium redox flow systems pitched at resilience for industrial sites and critical infrastructure.
Glazing, too, has its own CES moment. A self-powered “solar smart window” concept from South Korea aims to make tint-changing glazing work without the usual wiring and energy draw, tackling two barriers that have kept switchable glass niche outside prestige projects. If that promise survives the harsh arithmetic of cost and durability, it points to a future in which the building envelope is both responsive and easier to install at scale.
In manufacturing, the rhetoric has shifted from automation as incremental efficiency to automation as labour strategy. Hyundai’s loudest message in Las Vegas has been its push into robotics, with Boston Dynamics’ Atlas held up as “physical AI” destined for industrial environments. The practical near-term uses are unglamorous — parts sequencing, repetitive handling — but the intent is expansive: machines that can learn tasks and adapt to changing production lines.
The enabling layer for many of these ambitions is perception and compute. Hesai’s plan to expand lidar production capacity underlines how quickly sensors once reserved for premium vehicles are being retooled for robots and industrial spatial sensing. And the broader AI stack remains a CES centrepiece, with Nvidia’s keynote leaning heavily into the idea that AI is moving into devices and machines.
Retail technology is taking cues from the same playbook: less spectacle, more measurable outcomes. CES’s own retail programming has stressed data-driven personalisation and more intentional shopping journeys. The connective tissue back to construction and manufacturing is traceability and operational visibility — the dull-sounding capabilities that determine whether inventory is available, returns are managed, and supply chains can prove compliance.
What CES 2026 suggests is that the next wave of innovation will be judged less by novelty and more by deployment. The most serious exhibits are not trying to dazzle; they are trying to slot into existing buildings, factories and stores — and show up, eventually, on the profit-and-loss statement.
Why This Matters: CES really is a Pandora’s box of everything new and shiny in the tech world. For the glazing sector, attention centred on the self-powered solar smart window concept. It tackles two major barriers to the mass adoption of switchable glass and represents an exciting development. As with many of the concepts on show, it’s still in the early stages. However, past experience suggests this showground is a breeding ground for products that later enter the mainstream. It’s a case of when, not if.
